


Vince's Problem

by NervousAsexual



Category: Fear in the Night, Original Work
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 15:10:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7646089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NervousAsexual/pseuds/NervousAsexual
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>okay, okay, this is less a fan fiction than me writing gibberish through the movie. What's that? You haven't seen the movie? Go look it up on archive.org! It's in the public domain. Also it has a young De Kelley and surely he is the only man I will ever love.</p>
<p>Mostly I'm just leaving this here because it keeps getting lost in my Dropbox.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vince's Problem

I was out in the rain with the trenchcoat wrapped tight around me and tiny drops stinging my face, and she was there and he was there. We weren't in the rain, we were inside and he handed me a button. Just an ordinary button off someone's jacket, no bigger than a nickel.  
"Did you do this?" I asked him.  
"No," he said. "Don't you remember?"  
A chip was missing in the button. My thumbnail fit perfectly inside it.  
"I did?" I asked. He nodded, and I dropped.  
I dreamed I was sleeping or was lying in bed, still with the trenchcoat on and dripping saltwater everywhere. He leaned over me and looked but I was dreaming and couldn't look back. He glanced down at my hand and I felt his hand reach into mine. He took the button and flipped it like a nickel.  
"Oh, kid," he said. "You're all in pieces, huh?"  
She wasn't there but she still smelled of ammonia and alcohol. I woke up when I caught the scent and then right away I was asleep again.  
"All you had to do was take a few pills," he said. "Was that so hard?"  
I couldn't take pills. Could he understand that? I was drowning. They were horsepills but my hands were too wet to hold on. They got so slick and I kept losing them in the water. He didn't understand because the water was so still and so grey and so tepid you'd never know it was there, but I felt the pressure all around me. And everytime I tried to close my hand around them I slipped underwater. If I let go I would come back up. I opened my hands.  
"It's just your nerves," he said, standing above me with his face swimming in the water. "You're just worrying yourself thin is all. Take the pills and you'll feel so much better."  
He flipped the button into the water. I reached out to grab it but the water was so heavy. The button brushed my fingertips and then it was gone, spinning down into the dark water below. I sank through the water and inhaled water that smelled of ammonia and alcohol.  
Hands pulled me out, saltwater raining off the coat and my hair and out of my nose and ears and mouth. They dragged me out and she stood there looking down into the hole, with a white Easter lily in one hand and a bloody purple handkerchief in the other.  
"Why did you tell me?" she asked. "Why do I have to know? Why can't you just learn to keep your stupid mouth closed?"  
With the hand holding the handkerchief she made the sign of the cross, but instead of a cross she made the shape of angles and corners, I lost count of how many, and she wiped the bloody handkerchief on the corners of my mouth, up toward my ears.  
"You just don't know when to stop," she said, and she put the lily on my chest and put my crossed hands on top of it.  
She walked away and he looked down at me. He held the lily in both hands, pulled up under his chest like a kid.  
"You should take a vacation," he told me as dirt crumbled down around me. He walked down the stairs worn thin in the middle. "That's the answer. Go somewhere warm, some place with a beach where you can meet some nice kid who can cheer you up. Go have some fun and let's not hear any more about this. Okay?" He put the lily down at my feet and came forward. "Is that so hard?" He took the button out of his breast pocket and put it on my forehead, right between my eyes. "Why do you sleep with your clothes on?" he asked me. "I don't get you, kid."  
He walked away and the dirt hit my face. It was almost as bad as the water, packing into my nose and mouth and I knew I should struggle and shout to them that I was still down here. But it felt so warm and safe that I couldn't do it. The button began to burn and I knew it was a dream, and I knew I wouldn't mind if I did nothing but dream for the rest of my life.


End file.
